Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Infamous Five & The Freedom Of Screech

From: The Sunday Guardian

It is over a year since the post “India’s worst journalists” was made
here but it continues to remain a popular one. Some of the names from that post
have dropped off the journalistic depths they once occupied and aren’t as
active lately – Vir Sanghvi, Suzy Roy, Prannoy Roy. However, where TV is
concerned, there are five who have made sure nobody uproots them from their thrones
in the dungeons of journalism. ‘Hello Arnab, you know me, now meet my lawyer
please’! Isn’t that nice? Now what else would Arnab want for his Kangaroo
court? That’s from my post in August 2011 titled “Sanjiv Bhatt In Arnab's Kangaroo Court”. Yes, on August 9, 2011 one had the rare spectacle of an accused coming
to Arnab’s show with his lawyer. That’s when I nicknamed him ‘Justice Arnab’ on Twitter. He seems to
wear that title well which has also found wide acceptance as can be seen from
the image in this post. Although not much has changed in the list of India’s
worst journalists, it is for the first
time that a regular web magazine The Sunday Guardian (Dec 18) has taken a humorous
look at the comic five and their screeching contests. (I will quote Nandini
Krishnan’s article “Give me a break from screeching anchors” in SG generously
in this post). Krishnan has also coined an interesting term; FASS (Fellow Armchair Solution Specialist) which quite describes the TV
lot. Of course, I don’t consider the worst five journalists anymore, they are celebs
and collectively they are India’s worst media celebs. Hard to place them in any
particular order so we’ll just go alphabetically.

1.Arnab Goswami – He is undoubtedly the only one
who has broken all barriers of sound. His penchant for throwing an unending
number of questions, most of which don’t have any answer could have made him a
better quiz master. At other times I picture him as a referee at a Baseball
game who keeps screaming “strike one, strike two…” and the poor panellist is
mostly ‘Out’. He remains the only one who still demands answers from everyone –
from politicians, ordinary citizens and even from the nation collectively. His
favourite game with panellists is one called “butt and rebut”! That’s a shift
from the earlier version which he fondly called “Versus”. I have never quite
understood what versus was supposed to mean unless it is ‘Arnab versus everyone
else’. It is probable that Arnab is in a permanent contest with his former poor
cousins from NDTV and has to out-do them in every which way. To his credit he
is not as biased and predictable and with some refresher courses could still
make it to a TV journalist from the celebrity he’s become.

2.Barkha Dutt – The man of the moment or even man
of the year, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, once described her.. “As for Barkha Dutt,
she's been indiscreet and doing foolish things”. Well, she hasn’t exactly
stopped doing those things. She is Phil Donahue, Larry King and Christiane
Amanpour all rolled into one. And that’s a bad concoction! Two of those are now
retired from their regular shows. It is unlikely the taint of Radiagate will
escape her. And true to her arrogance she has neither apologised nor expressed
any form of regret. From self-righteous anger to calling dissenters as ‘trolls’
if there is one celeb who prefers monopoly on the freedom of screech she has to
be it. Lately she has added another aspect to her persona – she frequently
smiles and guffaws on her shows. This is probably on the advice of some image
improvement professional. And believe it or not, she is the only news celeb that
has credit titles that has a “Barkha’s wardrobe by….”. That’s a unique first
for an Indian news celeb. I have to wonder who the Sunday Guardian was
referring to with this statement: “She sabotages all effort at surprise attacks
by landing up in strategic locations during sensitive operations, and making
sure everyone knows she has….Don't forget The Great Defence of Lobbying With a
Lobbyist. I was doing a Mata Hari, people, come on! Anyway, Bollywood loves her
enough to give all its reporters short hair."

3.Karan Thapar – In an update to my post India’s
worst journalists I had mentioned that maybe he has sobered a bit and conducts
interviews with more professionalism.
His two recent interviews with Kapil Sibal and Arun Jaitley are ample
evidences of his own motives. To Sibal he asks if the NYT, which exposed Sibal’s
censorship plans, had any motives. With Arun Jaitley he directly accuses his
party of obstructing parliament rather than asking a
question. Gritting his teeth and growling like a wolf is back as his signature
style of interviewing. Well, he still
remains the rich man’s Tim Sebastian. The Sunday Guardian is spot on with this
comment: "But all of them together still wouldn't be half as annoying as
our own Tim Sebastian. His show ought to be called 'Are You Sayin?', with the
nasal twang. I think he uses some technique involving high-frequency vocal
emanations to make his guests' hair stand on end when he interrupts. He's comfy
as long as they cower and cry, but give him someone articulate like
Jayalalithaa or Benazir... and he writes a long defence of the interview in the
next day's paper."

4.Rajdeep Sardesai – Along with NDTV, Rajdeep’s channel can be credited with
creating the most spurious awards by news channels. The Indian of the year
award is his greatest journalistic achievement as Managing Editor of CNN-IBN. Two
things make him famous – one is Old Monk and the other is his regular ‘good-night’
'kiss' on Twitter. The only problem is he doesn’t stop at good night. And when he
finds time for journalistic pursuits he spends most of it talking cricket or
finding people who can trash Narendra Modi. Like Barkha’s Radiagate, Rajdeep
will never escape the taint of Cash4Votes during his lifetime as a media celeb.
He is also known for protecting India’s first family from any question or
attacks and his greatest journalistic achievement for the year has to be going
to Ramlila and having a picture taken with Anna Hazare. Rajdeep also has to be
the most philosophic media celebs around. When he’s not busy talking to
cricketers he dishes out sermons through his blog or through twitter. His
journalistic epitaph has already been written with his own favourite phrase “Hammam
mein sab nange hain”. And his happiness is complete when he finds someone like
Sanjiv Bhatt to call Narendra Modi a “common criminal” on his channel which
will be played over and over again. As the SG article states: “One pities his
co-anchor. She's so soft-spoken and mellow, you can see her flinch every time
he yells. You can also see her dabbing her cheek after a particularly emotional
outburst. Beware the rain of spittle."

5.Sagarika Ghose – I cannot confirm but can ask if
the SG article was referring to her by this hilarious statement: “FASS shudders!
Freedom of speech reminds him of a print journalist we've loathed ever since
she wrote an article about Indian men and orgasms. After she moved to TV, her
hair's got shorter and her diatribes longer," he mutters. See, she wants
to be Oprah, I explain, Sadly, there aren't enough fat people who feel bad
about themselves, enough closet gay people in the entertainment industry, or
enough couples who want to discuss their crumbling marriages on TV in this
country. So, all she can do is wear sleeveless society blouses and pastel saris
and milk bereaved parents for tears”. The title I blessed Sagarika with – ‘Cacofonix’
still stands unchallenged. To that she has added an extra-ordinary
accomplishment. Her debate on whether spiritual gurus should engage in politics
is the most horrendous fraud perpetrated on viewers this year. On being
exposed she then went on to claim that the Twitterati and others shouldn’t harass
her because she was a woman. The post ‘Sack Sagarika’ explains why she should
not have been on TV at all in the first place. She can still go back go to
writing soft porn stuff while opportunities still abound.

The PCI chairman, Justice Katju, has been extremely
critical of journalists for their lack of intellect and wide knowledge of
topics. Subramanian Swamy describes them even better: “ I know from personal
experience that journalists do a lot of hack jobs. If wanted, they character
assassinate you at the behest of the ruling party. In my case, the media cannot
say anything except that I'm a troublemaker, which doesn't sell very well. They
don't publish anything I say unless it becomes impossible like now…They've been
doing it systematically. When elections take place, many journalists come and
ask for money, saying they'll give favourable coverage in return”. Well, some
state elections are around the corner. The infamous five will come out with all
kinds of opinion polls and needless to mention, it will be bonanza in terms of
the moolah for the channels of the comic five and, of course, their freedom of
screech will cross new levels for sure.

10 comments
:

These 5 Media celebs are just the Front faces of a larger conspiracy. We have to go into the root of these Media houses & expose the real puppeteers & why are they retaining these anchors for so long ? Who are their investors & ideological masters ? Otherwise someday these 5 cartoons might be replaced by others but it would not end their Hypocrisy.

FASS Lol, Armchair Solution Specialist (ASS) would suit them. I think this would have been the author's initial idea. Anyway, whenever i am short of shit and giggles, i watch these shouting gonzos. They never dissapoint. Also, i am quite surprised to read that Arnab Goswami is not biased. If one gives him a kick on the crown jewels, a la Shaolin Soni of the I&B mantralaya, the uber douche will do your bidding faster than you can say shoo. Hard to blame him alone, rest all dopes are quite the same.

I have one suggestion, Ravinar, rather than giving them numerical tags, these douches should be given degrees (and our condolences). BS (bull shitter), MS (Master of bullshitters), PhD (doctor of piles, higher & deeper), BA (bachelor of assholes), MA, D.LiTT (Doctor, Lying through teeth). Ponder pliss.

Hi, Ravinar. I'm rather flattered at being quoted here. :-) I've noticed the guffawing too, and I don't think it's particularly far-fetched that an image consultant may have a thing or two to do with that! I don't watch her show, but will probably tune in to see the wardrobe line!

In Africa they call the " Big 5"... those gullible animals would hang their heads in shame if they come to know that their tag was hijacked to include cannibals ( sorry , even cannibals would resent this) like these beasts( oh, I can hear beasts yelling...no...no... nooo!!!), pests( ah, pests are screaming!!!)... no, no, these creatures don't deserve to be compared with even those creatures...they all must be reading your posts, yet they will never ever reform...

Shekhar Gupta from the print media must make it to the hall of fame! I dont think anyone else can claim the top slot competing with his just one achievement - Turn the Great Indian Express into which resisted even the Emergency Era so bravely into a Congress mouth-piece giving head line space to the likes of Diggy, that too for every outbursts and witch-hunting on Team Anna which probably would have surprised even the Congis!

Comments are welcome and are not moderated so as to allow free speech. However, comments that are off topic, abusive, defamatory or slanderous may be deleted. Comments disclosing personal information of individuals/entities will be deleted.Comments appearing here do not imply endorsement by author of this blog.